International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Volume 2 Issue 2 Article 2 2014 The Museumification of Rumi’s Tomb: Deconstructing Sacred Space at the Mevlana Museum Rose Aslan California Lutheran University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp Part of the Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons, Human Geography Commons, Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons, Other Religion Commons, and the Tourism and Travel Commons Recommended Citation Aslan, Rose (2014) "The Museumification of Rumi’s Tomb: Deconstructing Sacred Space at the Mevlana Museum," International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage: Vol. 2: Iss. 2, Article 2. doi:https://doi.org/10.21427/D7T41D Available at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp/vol2/iss2/2 Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. © International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage ISSN : 2009-7379 Available at: http://arrow.dit.ie/ijrtp/ Volume 2(ii) 2014 The Museumification of Rumi’s Tomb: Deconstructing Sacred Space at the Mevlana Museum Rose Aslan California Lutheran University [email protected] Tourists and pilgrims from across Turkey and around the world flock to the tomb of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), one of the greatest poets and Sufi masters in Islam. Since 1925, the Turkish government has relentlessly struggled to control Islamic influences in society and to channel people’s devotion to the memory of Kemal Ataturk (d. 1938) and his secular ideology. This article argues that by restructuring the layout and presentation of the tomb complex of Rumi, and putting the sacred space through the process of museumification, the Turkish state has attempted to regulate the place in order to control people’s experience of the sacred. The Museum functions simultaneously as a sacred place and a tourist site and the role of visitors as pilgrims and tourists is ambiguous. This article examines the history and politics of the space in order to illustrate how it functions as a site of contestation and how visitors act as important agents in the construction of the space’s meaning. Key Words: Rumi, Turkey, tourism, pilgrimage, sacred space, space and place, Sufism, mysticism, museumification, secularism, Ottoman history Introduction Turkish Sufi music evokes Sufi ceremonies that would have taken place there long ago. I passed by the Immediately upon arriving to the Turkish town of decorated gravestones of descendants and followers of Konya, I made my way to the most popular site in the Rumi. At the end of the passageway, I came across the town, Rumi’s tomb, officially known as the Mevlana elaborately embellished tombs of Rumi and his father, Museum, to learn more about the ‘best-selling poet in which were covered in richly embroidered clothes America’ (Ernst, 2003:181). On my way to the draped over the tombstones and surrounded by a visual museum, I passed by an impressive Seljuk-era mosque banquet of Arabic calligraphy, arabesque and and then joined the line at the ticket office to purchase geometric designs. This section of the tomb had been a ticket for the museum. I then passed through a lavishly preserved and restored, but at the foot of the turnstile and a metal detector and entered into a gate before the tomb stood a guard whose job was to delightful courtyard, which was full of foreign visitors keep visitors moving along. and Turkish families milling around. In the large courtyard, there were luscious gardens and in the centre an intricate fountain. I could catch the overwhelming scent of jasmine and roses wafting from Fig. 1 Visitors enter through the turnstiles after purchasing tickets and enter into the courtyard of the Museum complex the foliage. As it was the height of the Eid holidays, the before approaching the main attraction of Rumi’s tomb. area was packed with visitors and I had to weave my way through the crowd to reach the humble doorway to the shrine.[1] Upon walking into Rumi’s mausoleum after a hi-tech machine swathed my shoes in small plastic bags to protect the carpets and wood floors, I was first drawn to the sensory experience of sound: piped-in classical 1 ‘Eid’ is the Arabic / Turkish term for the two major Muslim holidays on the Islamic calendar. ~ 1 ~ Aslan The Museumification of Rumi’s Tomb Fig. 2 The grave of Rumi is covered with an elaborately Fig. 3 Visitors examine ritual objects in museum display embroidered cloth that includes verses of the Qur'an. On cases. top of the grave is a turban that represents the high spiritual status of Jalal al-Din Rumi. kitsch portrayal of pre-modern Sufi life, I exited the museum through another turnstile and once again enter modern Konya.[2] Struck by the conflicting uses of the museum, I was led to dig deeper into the history of the Here, I observed visitors stopping for a quiet moment, Sufi lodge and tomb as well as contemporary uses of whispering the Islamic prayer for the dead and requests the museum to understand the nature of contested for intercession on behalf of a sick child or for a safe sacred space in Turkey. journey. The guard insisted they move on, but some pilgrims remained defiantly in supplication, while Located in central Anatolia, Konya is a large city, others snapped photos and moved on to the next station although it is pleasant and feels more like a small town in the Rumi exhibit. After spending time in the tomb, I than a sprawling metropolis. Over the past decades, the entered into the room once used for communal prayers suburbs have encroached upon rural villages and farms and Mevlevi Sufi ‘whirling dervish’ ceremonies. This and the center of the city is full of low-rise buildings room is now home to ritual objects such as copies of and historic monuments. Despite its modern exterior, the Qur’an and manuscripts of Rumi’s poetry, musical those who know where to look can taste a bit of the old instruments, dervish garments, and prayer mats—all Konya, where the famous mystic and poet Rumi (d. locked beneath glass museum cases. Recently, part of 1273) – known as Mevlana in Turkish – used to live. the room has been opened up to allow for Muslim Annemarie Schimmel, a scholar of Islam who wrote on pilgrims to engage in their prayers, a new addition in recognition of the room’s historical use and perhaps due to a government increasingly influenced by Fig. 4 Wax figures of Mevlevi dervishes depict several disci- religion. ples practicing the ritual whirling ceremony. Exiting the sanctuary, I made my way to another section of the museum, formerly cells where dervishes (Sufi initiates) lived and studied. As soon as I entered the room, the wax mannequins dressed in the garb of dervishes caught my attention. The dummies were forever frozen in time. One was practicing his whirling for an eternity, another was cooking a stew that would never be ready, and one in the corner was practicing penitence on his rickety knees. Taken aback by the 2 Visitors from afar can now go on a virtual tour of the entire Mevlana Museum at the website of the Museum: http://dosyalar.semazen.net/Mevlana/english/a01.htm, as well as at this website: http:// www.3dmekanlar.com/tr/mevlana-muzesi.html. ~ 2 ~ International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Volume 2(ii) 2014 the poetry and life of Rumi, visited Konya on middle of Anatolia. Rumi grew up speaking and numerous occasions, and described her impression of writing in Persian and Arabic and was a teacher of the the town: Islamic sciences until he met his Sufi master teacher, Shams al-Din Tabrizi. After meeting Shams al-Din, Revisiting Konya in these days, is on the Rumi became intoxicated with his love for God and external level, a disappointing experience. One wrote the epic Masnavi, a six-volume collection of looks in vain for the charms of the old town and Persian poetry comprising more than 50,000 lines. His loses one’s ways among constructions–but followers founded the Mevlevi Sufi order that took despite the enormous crowds that have settled inspiration from the Masnavi and Rumi’s teachings. there, despite the numbers of tourists who throng around the mausoleum, one feels in the Soon after his death in 1273, his disciples donated late evening, especially in the presence of old funds to build his tomb. Although Rumi scholar family friends who preserve their tradition Franklin Lewis suggests that Rumi did not actually without ostentation that Mawlana’s presence want a dome to be built over his tomb so that he would still hovers over the city. (Schimmel, 1997: 67) be venerated after his death, in Aflaki’s biography of Rumi’s life, Manaqib al-Arifin (Biographies of the Viewed from above, the city has a circular shape. In Gnostics), a disciple of Rumi reads Rumi’s written the center lies the Ala al-Din park hill and mosque, will, built by the Turkish Seljuks in the early thirteenth century. From this circular park, which is surrounded Our disciples shall construct our tomb at a high by historic monuments, you can follow Mevlana Street location so that it can be seen from long to the sacred center of Konya, Rumi’s tomb and Sufi distances. Whoever sees our tomb from a lodge, now known as the Mevlana Museum, bordered distance, and believes in our faithfulness will be by three roundabouts in an older neighborhood of the blessed by God. God will meet all the needs and city.